c. southern and eastern
The white backlash against civil rights initiatives was matched by an increasing interest among white Americans in emulating the Black liberation struggle. Black power rhetoric had spread to Latino, American Indian, and Asian American activists by the late 1960s, and soon other marginalized groups not defined by ethnicity or descent - among them women, gays and lesbians, senior citizens, and people with disabilities - began appropriating the language of power, pride, and separatism to secure equal rights and promote self-esteem.
A similar upsurge in group pride took place among white people, especially the descendants of the southern and eastern Europeans, who had immigrated to the United States between the 1880s and the 1920s. After decades of identifying as white Americans and seeking entry into the cultural mainstream of a melting pot, a new generation of Americans began celebrating their distinctive identity as Italians, Jews, Poles, Greeks, Slovaks, or other ethnicities. Inspired by the political mobilization of African Americans, participants in this ethnic reveal also saw a new appeal and identifying as something other than white.